SEC v. Bradley Davis (insider trading, 2020)

Judgment entered

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In February 2020 the SEC charged Bradley Davis, a former Nordson vice president, with buying Nordson stock and options ahead of favourable earnings announcements in 2016 using confidential reports on its adhesives division. A jury in the Central District of California found him liable in 2022, and on July 29, 2022 the court ordered an injunction, $694,835.25 in disgorgement plus interest and a $100,000 penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$100k

Disgorgement

$695k

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$795k

Alleged gain

—

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the complaint on February 28, 2020 as litigation release 24750; it was filed in the Southern District of New York on February 20.

The complaint alleges Davis regularly received confidential reports showing the division's strong results, traded before the quarterly announcements, and sold shortly afterwards. It asked for an injunction, disgorgement with interest and a penalty; the outcome is described below.

The status was previously recorded as unknown; the release reports a filed complaint with no resolution.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

After a six-day trial, a jury in the Central District of California found Davis liable for insider trading, which the SEC announced on July 5, 2022. In an order dated July 29, 2022 the court granted the SEC's request for remedies in part: it permanently enjoined him from violating the antifraud provision, ordered him to disgorge the net profits from his 2016 trades, set at $694,835.25 after crediting the capital gains tax he had paid, with prejudgment interest to be recalculated by the SEC, and imposed a $100,000 civil penalty, well below the amount the SEC requested. The order told the parties to file a stipulated final judgment by August 5, 2022; that judgment, the interest figure and any appeal were not found, so no interest amount is recorded. The text of the order was read from a copy posted on a law firm's website, not from a court site.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Insider trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2020-02-28 Litigation release published
2. 2022-07-05 Jury finds Davis liable for insider trading (SEC statement)
3. 2022-07-29 Court orders injunction, $694,835.25 disgorgement and $100,000 civil penalty

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• SEC litigation release
• SEC statement on the jury verdict, 5 July 2022
• Court order on injunctive and monetary relief, 29 July 2022 (copy on law-firm site)

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.